


See My Heart Through My Eyes

by arrowsshootyouforwards



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: A time in Malta, Domestic Fluff, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe is never satisfied when he draws Nicky, M/M, getting together fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26484856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arrowsshootyouforwards/pseuds/arrowsshootyouforwards
Summary: A story of Joe and Nicky when they first confessed their feelings for one another, combined with an idea I had about Joe never being satisfied with his sketches of Nicky, they can't compare and Joe just wants the world to see his Nicoló through his eyes“I was just curious,” he swallowed, “did you ever speak to the one you liked? The one you were afraid wouldn’t feel the same way.”Nicoló remained silent for a beat before responding. “I talk to you every day,” he said, stunning Yusef to silence, “but I do not tell you the truth, because I am afraid of what you will think of me.”
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 20
Kudos: 276





	See My Heart Through My Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Just for context:  
> Joe/Nicky - current day  
> Yusef/Nicoló - the past

It had started again, Nicky noticed as he heard the scratch of charcoal against paper as he roused from his sleep. If Joe noticed the change in his breathing, he didn’t say anything, but Nicky remained still until he heard Joe pause his movements before turning his head to gaze at his husband through sleep-hazed eyes. Looking up through his thick lashes, Nicky smiled at Joe as he looked intently at his sketchbook, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on his task. His eyes shifted quickly back to his muse and then back to his paper before snapping back to Nicky’s. He smiled at him lowering his sketchbook.

“Is the art being kind to you my love?” Nicky asked as Joe leaned down to press their lips together in a morning greeting.

“Alas the perfect sketch still alludes me,” Joe sighed. “But the view of my muse is as beautiful as ever,” his smile returned. Nicky rolled onto his side, his hand brushed over Joe’s bare side and up over his chest, to his cheek.

“It will happen, one day,” he whispered, breathing in Joe, “and until that day you can sketch me whenever and however you like,” he assured, pulling their lips back together, rolling back onto the mattress with him.

Weeks passed.

Wherever Nicky could be found in their current safehouse, Joe was usually nearby with his sketchbook, charcoal or other various drawing tools and usually a pile of discarded sketches of Nicky. Each night as Joe slept, Nicky would go through the discarded drawings and save his favourites before Copley would do damage control and destroy the excess at the end of the week. He always checked with Joe first and Joe would distractedly wave a hand at him and make an affirmative noise that he didn’t want to keep any of them.

Copley had to leave them to sort out an issue with his remaining family in England, leaving Joe, Nicky, Andy and Nile in Malta where they had been laying low since their altercation with Merrick and his company. This was when things grew out of hand with Joe’s ambition.

It started one morning, Joe had been sketching late into the night, he and Nicky stretched out on opposite ends of the sofa, legs tangled in the middle when Joe dozed off. Knowing if he was woken he would just pick up his charcoal and keep going, Nicky detangled himself, kissed his curls and covered him with a throw before going to take a cool shower to combat the heat before turning in. Nicky didn’t mind Joe drawing him, he just wished he wasn’t so critical of his own work. Joe knew every line of Nicky’s body better than Nicky did, better than he knew his own body at this point but his art never translated in his eyes. He was never satisfied with it, it never captured Nicky the way Joe saw him.

Joe’s drawings of Nicky littered every available surface of the safehouse, but the others just went with it. Nicky because he knew what it meant to Joe, Andy because she knew Joe needed to work through this as he did every few decades and Nile went along with it because the others did. The next morning, the peace was broken by Andy groaning as she reached into the box that usually held coffee filters for the coffee machine, but rather than that, she pulled out a stack of Nicky’s face instead.

“Urgh!” She groaned, rolling her head back as she did. Nile looked up from where she was eating cereal at the table, “not again,” Andy moaned. “He needs to get rid of the ones he isn’t keeping,” she muttered hunting through the cupboard for another box of filters.

“How long does he normally do this for?” Nile asked, gesturing to the piles of papers surrounding them.

“In the past it’s usually until we pick up a new mission and with my stupidly mortal body still healing and you still training, it’s likely to go on for a while. And the less satisfied he feels by them the more determined he gets.”

“He’s been at it a month, surely he likes at least one of them?”

“He’s been at it for centuries Nile,” Nicky startled her, joining them for breakfast. He had been out and was carrying a paper bag with him. From it he pulled a fresh box of filters and tossed it in Andy’s general direction. “He’s rarely ever satisfied with them,” he told her, unpacking the shopping. “I like to go through them and keep a scrapbook of my favourites, the rest are destroyed. Too risky to leave them laying around.” He explained to her, “morning,” he smiled over her head towards the door at Joe who was rubbing the back of his neck, stretching his arms and yawning as he joined them in the kitchen. Andy held out a fresh, steaming cup of coffee towards Joe, who thanked her tiredly in Arabic.

He sipped the coffee and sighed joyfully at the taste and joined Nile at the table. It took him a moment to work through his sleepy haze to translate into English in his head before he began speaking to them. “Sorry about the mess guys, I’ll go through them later and get rid of what I don’t want,” he promised, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and finger.

“Don’t sweat it Joe, we get it,” Andy told him before anyone else could respond.

“I think I need to give my hand a rest,” he told them, flexing his right hand. “I don’t think it’s ached this much since I first took up sketching,” he recollected. “Of course, starting to sketch Nicoló likely made it worse,” he teased, grinning over his mug at his husband. 

Nicky chuckled as he sliced fruit for his own breakfast, “you did do that a lot in the beginning,” he remembered, looking over to a curious Nile. “Back when Joe first took up art, he mostly did inanimate objects and the occasional animal, but one day about a century after we had begun travelling together, we hadn’t met Andy and Quynh yet, he asked if he could try drawing me. We were stuck in a house we had fixed up, only lit by campfire light due to a storm and we weren’t going anywhere so I told him he could.”

“His eyes were particularly difficult I remember,” Joe reminisced as Nicky brought a large platter of fruit over to the table, telling them all to tuck in.

“My eyes were easy, I remember you complained particularly about my nose and lips,” Nicky teased him.

“You wouldn’t keep still,” Joe rebutted playfully.

“You were so shy when you asked,” Nicky remembered, “like you were afraid I would say ‘no’.”

“You could have said no,” Joe reasoned. Nicky chuckled, he remembered it well. Like with a lot of their stories, Nile was listening to them, curious about the centuries they had lived.

Back in the 1200s, Yusef and Nicoló had been travelling through a remote part of Eastern Europe. They had found an abandoned building a good distance from a few different villages. They decided to settle for a time, they had been travelling for so long and needed a break. The building needed some work doing to it, but it was work they were both capable of, they thought, as they assessed what needed to be done. Over two months they fixed up the building, turning it into somewhere liveable, taking a day here and there to travel to the different villages to see what they could purchase to eat and furnish the place with. From one village, Yusef returned with animal pelts to replace their old sleeping mats which were wearing thin. From another, a coastal village, Nicoló found he could purchase assorted ingredients to cook with. Cooking had become a hobby of Nicoló’s as they had travelled, he loved getting to experiment with new ingredients. In the beginning, acquiring the new ingredients took a few attempts. During the century they had spent travelling together already they had both become a quick study when it came to languages. They had been to this part of the world before, yet every time they returned, the language seemed to evolve and for the first few days they felt like they were back at square one.

The small building had two floors with a worn ladder connecting the ground floor to the upper level. Yusef spent a few days gathering materials from a nearby wooded area making a new and stronger ladder so they could explore the home further. When they were able to see the upper level, they found it had been used mainly for storage by whoever had abandoned it. There were a few aged chests that weren’t locked that they were able to investigate. One held the clothes of who they assumed had lived there, a man a woman and at least one child it seemed. Another had been looted by others before them, it likely had held something of value seeing as it appeared to have a damaged locking mechanism and the third held scraps and scraps of paper, some with faces and people drawn on them, others blank. At the bottom of the chest, there was a box with charcoals inside, which seemed to be the drawing material.

Yusef, after checking Nicoló had no want for them, took up the hobby. He started simply, taking an object in the building and sketching it by candlelight in the evenings or when it rained too heavy for them to work or venture to a village. Over a year, they worked on the building, turning it into something they were happy to live in. They planted a garden, so they had fresh ingredients, went hunting in the wooded area and traded in the villages, while Yusef also worked on his new skill. He was getting very good at sketching, but he had thus far only drawn inanimate objects. He had been hesitant to just up and draw Nicoló, though it had been tempting, but he didn’t want him to just find it weird with Yusef just staring at him.

“Something on your mind Yusef?” Nicoló asked one evening. Nicoló had been reading his beaten old bible from his pack in a moment of quiet prayer and meditation.

“No, no, it’s nothing,” Yusef said, a little too quickly.

“You look deep in thought my friend, are you sure?”

“Well I’ve been thinking about starting to draw people and wondered if you’d consent to me using you to practise on?” Yusef asked, deciding Nicoló knew him well enough to know he wasn’t being truthful.

Nicoló smiled, “Of course you can draw me for practise,” he told him. “Never be afraid to ask something so simple of me my friend.”

Over the next century, Yusef spent his free time between battles and moving and helping to gather needed supplies, drawing Nicoló. He spent a whole year once just practising his eyes, another three months solid one year just on his hands, holding different things. Sometimes he would ask Nicoló to pose, so he could draw him holding a sword, like he was mid-battle. Spending so much time, looking at and studying Nicoló, Yusef began to develop a new appreciation for Nicoló’s form, this coupled with the way they spent their lives together, Yusef realised he was starting to have stronger feelings for the other man than those of friendship.

At first, when he realised, he was afraid, afraid of how Nicoló would react to Yusef harbouring such feelings for him. He tried to stop drawing him, thinking if he stopped, the feelings might go away, but they only strengthened. He also began drawing Nicoló more from memory, rather than using him as a model. If Nicoló noticed he stopped, he didn’t say anything. Perhaps he was fed up of it after a century?

This was not true.

Nicoló had indeed noticed Yusef’s resistance to ask him anymore. Nicoló’s feelings towards Yusef had also evolved during their time together and he had in turn wrestled with his faith and calling to the priesthood in the process. The way Nicoló had processed his immortality, was that God had given him a gift and sent him a message of peace in the form of the other man. His enemy, a man he was taught to hate for another’s personal, twisted reasoning. Sensing his companion’s sudden shyness, Nicoló began offering to sit and model for Yusef and more often than not, with a guilty heart, Yusef would accept his offer. To Nicoló, this was his way of letting Yusef know his feelings, letting him know that he would be all his; if only he would ask.

In the kitchen in Malta, Nicky chuckled noting: “It’s amusing now to think back that it took us even longer to realise each other’s feelings.”

“You guys really had no idea?” Nile asked, surprised. The couple were both so tactile with each other, it seemed impossible to think of a time when the two were together but not together.

“No idea, we both had very different ways of flirting, neither of which seemed to translate well to the other,” Joe smiled, holding Nicky’s hand over the table. Andy had joined them as they told Nile the story, picking at the fruit platter in the middle. “Personally, I thought Nicoló’s background as a Catholic and growing up to be a priest was a reason he wasn’t responding to my weak attempts of flirting.”

“You were a Catholic priest?”

“For a time, however by the time Yusef had begun sketching me I had long since made peace with the idea God had brought the two of us together for a purpose and he would want us to be happy together, no matter what. I was just concerned how he might react. To think if we had only had the guts to talk about it,” he said.

Time passed for Nicoló and Yusef and the 1300s arrived and with it, more travelling and destinations. They were on an island that would one day be known as Malta and had gone into a town to do some trading. They had been settled near the town for the better part of a year and the owners of the trading stalls were familiar with both of them. Yusef had noticed that one of the young women who helped her aging mother with their herb stall had taken a liking to Nicoló, often giving him a discounted price, prompting Nicoló to do the shopping from there for them.

Nicoló at first didn’t seem to notice until Yusef had pointed it out to him. He teased him a little at first, but in truth he was relieved when Nicoló told him she seemed nice enough but wasn’t the one for him. Yusef had seemed content to leave it at that, until one day in July as Nicoló bartered for a lower price, Yusef saw how he gazed at the young woman, making her cheeks stain pink and dip her head with a girlish giggle as she accepted his offer for the herbs. Yusef felt a stab of jealousy pierce his heart and had to turn away from the scene. He had long since come to terms with his own feelings for Nicoló. His feelings for this man burned with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Not that he would ever tell him that, however. But it seemed as of yet that it just was not meant to be. Perhaps, he thought, Nicoló had grown to care for the girl in the many months they had been shopping there. He had long since made peace with the idea that Nicoló would not feel the same way about him. Though he still put himself through his own form of torture. Still requested to sketch Nicoló when he could. When he dared.

That evening, he got his charcoals and new papers and sat across their table he had built when they had first found where they were staying as Nicoló began preparing the fish for their supper. The fish Yusef had been out with the fishermen to catch early that morning. He held up the charcoal wordlessly, raising his eyebrow in question. Nicoló’s answering smile made Yusef melt a little inside as he gave his permission. Yusef watched, Nicoló’s hands were deftly accurate with a knife, making no wrong moves as he filleted the fish with practised ease. Yusef tried, Allah knows he tried not to think about how Nicoló flirted with the girl, but he couldn’t help himself or his curiosity.

“So, that girl in the market,” across from him, Nicoló’s cheeks turned pink, embarrassed Yusef had seen that, “she seems to have taken a liking to you,” he continued, carefully as he sketched the rough guidelines for his sketch.

“It would seem so,” Nicoló responded.

“She is very pretty.” Yusef tried to say nonchalantly, failing.

“I suppose she is,” his companion replied, concentrating on his task.

“Just to say, um, if you ever required any privacy one evening, I can go out, leave you two,” Yusef hated the words and suggestion leaving his lips, but he didn’t get a chance to dwell on it as Nicoló cursed loudly, having sliced deeply into his finger with his blade. Yusef was quick, snatching up a cloth, going around the table to where Nicoló was cradling his injury to his chest. He dabbed at the spilling blood, holding the wound together. Yusef assumed he had overstepped, perhaps Nicoló was unsure about progressing to a place of physical intimacy with this girl due to his background. “Apologies my friend,” Yusef said, “if it was the suggestion of physical intimacy, you shouldn’t have to worry, you could simply spend time with her. I did not mean to imply-”

“Yusef,” Nicoló cut him off as his finger began healing. Yusef’s words were finally starting to make sense, he smiled, “Yusef, you’re right and I’m sure that she is a lovely girl, but my feelings for her are simply not there like that,” he explained, smiling. “You simply caught me off-guard my friend,” he chuckled as his finger healed fully and he inspected it. Taking the rag from Yusef he began wiping the blade to clean it. “And likewise, if you ever want to be alone with someone, all you must do is ask,” Nicoló said smiling.

“Thank you, though I doubt that will be a problem,” Yusef told him, going back to his seat and picking up his charcoal. Nicoló returned to preparing dinner and Yusef imagined that his reluctances remained in his past priesthood until he looked up through his thick lashes and added:

“There is only one person I feel that way about and I don’t think they will ever feel the same,” he said with a sad smile.

“I know the feeling,” Yusef muttered under his breath, not expecting to be heard until Nicoló chuckled and said:

“We’re quite a pair, you and I,” making Yusef smile, his cheeks burning under his beard.

They continued in silence, once he had finished another unsatisfactory drawing, he used it as a starter for their fire so Nicoló would have something to cook their supper on. Outside, they heard the rain setting in, the heavier rain was a signal of the changing seasons on this island and Yusef’s thoughts turned to the colder months that were fast approaching. “It will be getting colder soon,” he said, stoking the flames and adding a couple of logs he had chopped that afternoon.

“Hmm,” Nicoló said, seasoning the fish, “we should think about moving our sleeping areas closer together again,” he suggested, shyly.

“Yes, we should, perhaps not this week, unless the weather really does take a turn,” Yusef agreed, though he hated himself for this self-torture he insisted on putting himself through.

The weather did turn, quicker than it had before and they pushed their sleeping area’s together, sleeping in each other’s warmth.

“So when did you first start doing that?” Nile asked.

“Around a few months after we escaped the Crusade where we first met. I believe after the first night in which we both froze to death, we figured we should get over our mistrust and stay warm if we wanted to survive,” Joe explained to her, sipping his coffee.

A harsh Winter season followed for Yusef and Nicoló that year. They spent cold evenings around their fireplace, drinking spiced drinks Nicoló would create while he felt inventive with his ingredients and huddled close in their bed, weapons always within close reach. It occurred to Yusef that if they had not come to terms with their natural bodily reactions many decades before, things could have been worse and more embarrassing when they woke up to feel a hard presence against their body in the mornings. But they had long since accepted that this was a part of their lives, even if now they each felt secret embarrassment at their reaction to the other man.

Things became more embarrassing for Joe, as some mornings, he caught himself, half asleep doing things that probably crossed some sort of boundaries. It started in the early Winter season, they had recently pushed their sleeping spaces together and they were under the pelts they had bought and cared for on their previous travels. In the warmth of their bodies Nicoló had shrugged out of his vest, the material now bunched between Yusef’s stomach and Nicoló’s back. Yusef had an arm over Nicoló, holding onto his shoulder by the ground, holding him securely. Yusef’s nose was tickled by Nicoló’s long hair, but if he turned his face slightly, he could find the skin of Nicoló’s shoulder. Half asleep and aware he was holding the object of his desires, Yusef’s brain sent out an unapproved signal to his body, his lips pressed against the bare skin of Nicoló’s shoulder, kissing it before holding him tighter, inhaling Nicoló’s scent. Nicoló moaned, making Yusef freeze as his brain caught up with his actions. It wasn’t an unpleasant moan, more a moan one made when tasting a delicious dish for the first time, as the flavours exploded on the tongue, after seducing the senses. Yusef had to bite his lip to keep himself from moaning as Nicoló pushed back against him, sighing contentedly in his arms.

Yusef waited until Nicoló relaxed his position before rising for the day. Though, ashamedly he did so while pressing another kiss to his sleeping bed mate’s shoulder. He dressed in a hurry to fight the morning chill and began working on a fire to warm the room before he left to go fishing with the locals in the coastal town. They were always grateful for an extra pair of hands and Yusef was able to bring home a fish for their supper, more if the catch was good.

Nicoló woke alone, as he often did, to the cracking of the logs on the fire. Shrugging back into his vest he cleared away their sleeping area and put the small home back to rights before going through Yusef’s drawings of him from the night before, stashing away two he was quite fond of. In one he was still sleeping from the morning before and the second was from when they went hunting in the woods with the bow and arrows he had fashioned when they had arrived at this place. He had the bow drawn, the tail of the arrow brushing his cheek as he focused in on his prey. Yusef must have drawn that one from memory, but it looked like he had just taken the image by freezing time.

Checking his ingredient stores he decided what he needed to pick up from the town for their supper that night and set off, setting a pot of water warming over the fire from the freezing stream that ran nearby. It was still early Winter, but the snow was already dusting the road into the town. Nicoló went to the market stalls, trading some meat from his prey the night before which they hadn’t eaten and wouldn’t need themselves. He got lucky, managing to trade a perfect cut of meat for a bottle of the spiced wine the locals brewed. Nicoló, on the coldest nights, would sometimes sip at wine to take the edge off the chill that he felt more so than Yusef. If the snow was settling, it looked like it could well be one of those nights.

That afternoon when Nicoló returned, Yusef was chopping fresh firewood for them and the pot of water was simmering nicely. Nicoló began preparing their food, Yusef bringing in the firewood when it was ready. Nicoló pushed over some berries he’d picked on the way home from town for Yusef to eat while he waited. It was late in the season, but the berries were still juicy as he bit into them. He pulled his charcoal and paper out of his pack and silently asked to draw Nicoló once again. Receiving approval, he got to work. “Still not satisfied my friend?” Nicoló asked.

“Not quite, your eyes are never perfect and your lips and nose cause problems for me from certain angles,” this was mostly a lie. Yusef could sketch Nicoló perfectly from a memory, but his eyes were never as Yusef saw them.

The nights grew longer and colder, in evenings, Nicoló would sip his spiced wine before tucking himself against Yusef to sleep for the night. One night, sleep did not come easy to either party and they laid, listening to the logs crackling in the dying fire. “Nicoló,” Yusef began hesitantly, he was unsure whether to bring it up at all, but Nicoló had gone through about half a bottle of the spiced wine and had a 50/50 chance of not remembering him asking in the morning.

“Hmm?”

“I was just curious,” he swallowed, “did you ever speak to the one you liked? The one you were afraid wouldn’t feel the same way.”

Nicoló remained silent for a beat before responding. “I talk to you every day,” he said, stunning Yusef to silence, “but I do not tell you the truth, because I am afraid of what you will think of me.”

“Me?” Yusef whispered, shocked.

“Of course, you, Yusef. Who else would there be?” Nicoló murmured half asleep.

“Do you mean these things? Or have you had too many sips tonight?” Yusef asked, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt. Nicoló turned in his arms so he was facing Yusef.

“I mean it, all and more,” he responded, nuzzling closer into the warmth of Yusef’s chest. “Waking up after a night like this is the worst part of my day, because I have to leave your arms,” he mumbled, but Yusef heard every word as though he were shouting it from across the room. “I know it’s selfish of me, but some years, towards the end of the season, I pray the snow will last a few days more, just so I can be held by you a little longer,” he explained. “And I know God approves of us, because he usually answers my prayers.”

Yusef was hanging onto Nicoló’s every word, his brain branding them to memory for all eternity. “Please, Nicoló, when morning comes, give me a sign, a sign that you could ever feel the same way. If only I knew you meant it, I would give you my heart here and now.”

“I will and I do mean every word,” Nicoló trailed off as he dozed off in the warmth of Yusef’s arms.

Sleep did not come easily for Yusef that night. He laid awake in their cocoon of warmth, holding Nicoló like his life very well depended on it. He managed to get some light sleep in before the first light came through the crack in the door, illuminating the room. In his arms, Nicoló stirred, he hadn’t moved from his position he fell asleep in. Yusef’s fingers tickled the back of his neck as he woke, smiling up into Yusef’s worried eyes. “Morning my love,” Nicoló whispered, pressing their foreheads together.

“You remember?”

“Everything, now please, take this as a sign,” Nicoló murmured, closing the gap between their lips, closing his eyes again as Yusef, momentarily stunned, melted against him.

“And we never looked back,” Joe finished the story, “I still can never show him the way I see him, no matter how hard I try,” he spoke, looking at Nicky in a way that made Nile believe true love did indeed exist in the world. “I just want people to see My Heart as I see him,” he added. Nicky smiled, leaning over the corner of the table to kiss Joe.

“They will, you will get it one day, I still have my favourites, even if you can find fault in all of your master pieces,” Nicky told him as Andy cleared her throat.

“Remember our agreement, keep it PG in the shared kitchen,” she warned them, picking up the now empty coffee mugs, platter and Nile’s cereal bowl.

“Si, si,” Nicky muttered, holding his hands where she could see them, though under the table, Joe slid his hand along Nicky’s thigh teasingly. Suddenly a knife embedded itself in the table by Joe’s other hand and he raised both of them in surrender.

“They’re up,” he told Andy who had thrown the knife with deadly accuracy without even looking. Joe turned back to Nile, “we met Andy and Quynh a few decades later, they’d seen us in their dreams – just as we had – and the first thing Quynh asked their first night was why we were sleeping separate from one another,” he chuckled.

“And you’re still trying to sketch him?”

“I just can’t do him justice on the page.” Joe shrugged.

“You do me all the justice and more,” across the room, Andy twirled another blade between her fingers as she saw them shift closer out of the corner of her eye.

“To you, and maybe others, but in my eyes, the paper cannot hold a candle to the real thing,” Joe told him, standing he held his hand out to Nicky. “Come My Heart, you can look through the new ones before we get rid of them. Preferably before Copley comes back and complains about how irresponsible it is for me to have left so many out in the open.” Joe suggested, and he and Nicky left the room to get started on clearing away the excess sketches.

“Are they really that bad once they get going?” Nile asked Andy as she slipped the blade back into the sheaf by her ankle.

“There was a safe house in rural South Korea we liked; had to burn it down. There was no way we were ever cooking in that place again; those memories will haunt me and Booker for the rest of our lives.” Andy told her, “come help me get some wood, we’ve got a lot of drawings to dispose of and that calls for a bonfire,” she said, tossing Nile a light jacket and leading the way out and off of the back porch.


End file.
